Sunday, March 1, 2015

The Three Sisters

Seventh & Ninth Street Bridges from the Sixth St. Bridge, Pittsburgh, 2015
Yesterday was cold, like most of this winter has been, but the sun was shining and I wanted to get out and photograph the frozen Allegheny River in the city. Even on a weekend with no events happening, parking is expensive. We chose to park on the street and pay only $1 for twenty minutes. Suddenly we were off to the races to cover as much territory along and across the river as we could in about half an hour. It's an odd experience to be galloping along, suddenly stopping dead in your tracks and getting a shot, but that's what we did. Since it was only about 5F, the fast pace also helped us stay warm.
In the above shot we're about halfway across the Sixth Street Bridge, the first of the trinity of suspension bridges known as The Three Sisters, with the Seventh and Ninth Street Bridges, and an unrelated train trestle, upriver in the background. Officially all three bridges are named for famous people associated with Pittsburgh: the Clemente Bridge (6th), the Andy Warhol Bridge (7th), and the Rachel Carson Bridge (9th), but locally only the Clemente Bridge ever gets referred to as just that. During home Pirates games the bridge is closed to motorized traffic and you can walk from downtown to the stadium on the north shore. I've done it, and it's the kind of oddly intimate urban thing that makes you love your city even more.